What Nobody Tells You About Love In Marriage

I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

Every year, my husband and I will re-watch our wedding video footage. And every year, I would ask him the same question — “How come we never cried when we said our vows to each other, ah?”. Thankfully, my husband is a patient man and my repeated mundane question always trigger the same response from him. In his usual monotonous and logical style, he would recite, “Because we were sure, mah. Why need to cry?” I would always follow up by rolling my eyes at him and give him a good tight slap on the shoulder for not entertaining the romantic in me.

We have been married for 4 years and in our time together, attended at least ten wedding celebrations of many of our peers and family. Every wedding solemnization reignited the feelings of sentimentality and the absolute lovey-dovey feels. Interestingly, every wedding we attended had the couple tearing up or sobbing when articulating their vows to each other. Sometimes, this made me wonder if my husband and I were doomed to head towards divorce because we were just not that expressively affected by the gravity of our vows? I will not lie — we have had multiple challenges in these 4 years that have made me consider divorce as an option. I don’t believe we are different from any of our married friends. Yet, in the span of these 4 years, we have heard heartbreaking stories of our loved ones embroiled in messy divorce proceedings, partially affected by the Singapore laws on divorce which mandate that couples can only get divorced when they fulfill the following circumstances:

1. Be domiciled in Singapore at the point of the commencement of divorce proceedings OR habitually resident in Singapore for at least 3 years, before the commencement of divorce proceedings; AND

2. Have been married for at least 3 years, unless the party filing for divorce has suffered exceptional hardship or exceptionally unreasonable and cruel behaviour”

Next, you must prove that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. This is the only legal ground for divorce.

There are a few ways of showing that your marriage had irretrievably broken down. These ways are found under section 95(3) of the Women’s Charter: